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Pallas Athena Becomes Mentor by LindaAnn LoSchiavo
Athena, patron goddess, chose the boy
Telemachus, bereft of fatherly
Attention twenty years. His Mentor she
Became, a male identity outside
Without destroying her magnificent
Unmothered mind, begat by Zeus, a god
Who complicated instinct with his will’s
Odd virgin birth, a supernatural
Shift in paternal practice. Wisdom shaped
Intent (for once) instead of Zeus’s lust.
And virginal Athena stayed, her sex
Untested, gender switched. Denatured is
This deity, although her father’s child.
Telemachus is, too, his father’s child,
Yet keeps himself desiring honestly
All goddess-guided goals, suspecting that
His body could betray his heart—like Dad’s—
Thus abstinence is what makes sense for now.
He's framed by each occasion, though, cross-dressed
Athena’s body’s angles test the fit
Of his hot admiration for divines.
He finds himself a hinge-jawed fish at times,
His Mentor lecturing—arresting eyes.
Her slim wrist raised, concerned about a point
Of knowledge, has begun to cancel chaste
Surmise, the waste of his untried male pride.
His mind is walking off the edge of that
Instructor, can’t get certain feelings right.
Besides their heating up things once or twice,
Athena is about to say, there are
Some other ways of knowing. Then eyes meet.
The quiet’s left to speak, peak for itself.